


Tiger's Eye Interlude

by fElBiTeR



Series: Finding Comfort In Chaos [3]
Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Humor, Light Angst, Maybe A Tiny Warm Feeling That Can Be Categorized As Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Ongoing Theme That Alex Has Trauma And Needs A Hug, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25549360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fElBiTeR/pseuds/fElBiTeR
Summary: Alex wakes up to Yassen standing at the foot of his bed. He has an entire half of a conversation with the assassin, completely unsure if he’s awake, dreaming, or if Yassen is just a figment of his imagination.Or, Yassen versus a sleep deprived teenager with trauma.[For Spyfest 2020 Week 4]
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Series: Finding Comfort In Chaos [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817281
Comments: 18
Kudos: 156
Collections: Spyfest 2020





	Tiger's Eye Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> this one is an interlude/sequel to my previous fics in this series. you DON'T have to read dereliction of duty to understand this fic or the next one I'm planning, however, if you haven't at least read hiraeth, then you might be a bit confused...
> 
> hjsdfjsk honestly what am I doing at this point?? am I even getting the characterization anymore? no clue! I'm just starved of yassen and alex content y'know :'(

Alex blinks groggily at the dark figure at the entrance of his room. Yassen, holding something in his hand, walks around the corner of Alex’s bed, slowly approaching his desk to the right of his pillow.

“Why are you here?” Alex asks, but it tumbles out as a slurred jumble of constants and vowels meshed together. He blinks. He can’t speak properly. It’s a sign that he might actually be dreaming right now. There’s no rational explanation for why a world-class contract killer is sneaking around his bedroom.

Yassen freezes as if he’s just been caught doing something that he really shouldn’t be, which is ridiculous because there’s no way Yassen would ever let himself be caught, let alone by Alex. 

Therefore, Alex must be dreaming.

Alex pushes himself up into a sitting position with his elbows, lazily leaning against the wall behind his bed before squinting at Yassen. Black, nondescript clothing? Check. A wicked scar across his cheek? Check. Unfairly lithe but solid physique, like a dancer’s body? Check. Irritatingly expressionless face? Check.

Alex has to applaud his imagination. Dream Yassen looks exactly like how the real thing would look. 

“This isn’t a dream,” Yassen says, raising an eyebrow. Talks like how the real thing would, too.

“That’s exactly what you would say if this were a dream,” Alex retorts, narrowing his eyes. “You can’t fool me.”

Yassen gives him an exasperated stare. “You should be asleep.”

“I _am_ asleep,” Alex says, defensively. He lowers his covers down slowly, until they’re just under his chin and pooled around his lap, piled up to his neck.

“You’re not dreaming,” Yassen informs him, again.

“Yes I am,” Alex insists. “Don’t lie to me.” Yassen looks particularly annoyed at that, for some reason currently beyond Alex. Maybe he doesn’t like being called a liar? Interesting.

Yassen crosses the few metres remaining before he reaches Alex’s desk, pushing the chair aside in favor of standing and staring at the miscellaneous objects neatly displayed towards the back, picking one of them up and examining it, looking, for the most part, disinterested.

“It makes sense that I would dream about you, actually,” Alex says aloud, mostly to himself. 

Of all the horrible things that have occurred in the last two weeks, earlier that night with Yassen has actually been a bit of a bright spot and a highlight on Alex’s short list of things that happened to him that weren’t horrible. Plus, Alex has heard that dreams are usually an amalgamation of reality.

“There was the thing on the roof with Julius, and then you walked me home…” he trails off, suddenly feeling bewildered.

That’s right. Yassen never gave him a serious answer when he asked the assassin why he wanted to walk an annoyingly mouthy, stubborn, and injured teenager home.

“You walked me home,” Alex mumbles slowly, confused. “Why did you do that?”

Yassen gazes at Alex blankly instead of answering his question.

“This is _my_ dream, isn't it? Can’t you be more talkative?” Alex mutters before blinking confusedly at Yassen, who’s placing something on his desk.

“Not a dream,” Yassen corrects him.

“If I’m awake right now,” Alex says, suspicion still lacing his tone, “then tell me something that I don’t know.”

Yassen kindly complies to Alex’s request by proceeding to speak rapid-fire Russian, syllables heavy, pronounced, and most importantly, impossible to understand.

“Oh god,” Alex says, a hint of hysteria creeping in. He’s definitely not beginning to panic. “I’m not dreaming.” 

There’s nothing in his room within reach that he can turn into a makeshift weapon. Yassen is blocking the path to the door and is one lunge away from Alex, and the assassin probably has a gun hidden somewhere on him, too. Jack is probably asleep in her room nearby if not dead already, shot or stabbed or something else horribly gruesome. Alex pales at the thought. His phone is on his desk, but he can’t guarantee that he can grab it and call for help before Yassen swiftly snaps his neck.

“Alex,” Yassen says. Some of Alex’s panic must be showing on his face because the assassin actually looks a little bit worried. “Are you… feeling alright?”

“Me?” Alex laughs, really more like a choked noise than anything else. “I’m doing fantastic. Absolutely phenomenal. You? The weather is looking rather nice, tonight, don’t you think?” An edge of panic lines his words. 

“... It’s four in the morning.” Now Yassen is _really_ starting to look alarmed.

“Oh,” Alex says, but it comes out strangled. “You’re here to clean up loose ends and I guess technically I’m—I’m a loose end. A very loose end. A rather dangly one.” Why else would an assassin be standing in the middle of his room at four in the morning?

Suddenly, his chest grows tight and restricted, as if someone were sitting on it or reaching deep into him and squeezing all the air out of his lungs because he can’t seem to breathe anymore no matter how much he opens his mouth and gasps for breath, over and over and over.

“I’m dying,” Alex wheezes, grabbing at his blanket and hunching over, curling forwards. “Oh god, I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying,” Yassen tells him, but the almost unsure tone in the assassin’s voice isn’t doing a very good job of convincing Alex otherwise. It sure feels like dying.

“I’m dying,” Alex says insistently, but some part of him is vaguely aware that if he’s not breathing, then how can he possibly be speaking? 

“Alex,” Yassen says, and suddenly, faster than Alex can even blink, the assassin is hovering over his bed—seriously, how did he move that fast?—quickly grabbing Alex’s dominant hand and splaying it across the other man’s chest. 

He’s dimly aware that the assassin’s hands are larger and strangely warm on his own cold, trembling fingers and that under Alex’s palm, he can feel an unfairly sturdy, lean body of someone who keeps up a very consistent workout routine.

“Listen to me. You are hyperventilating. You are having a panic attack. You are not dying,” Yassen murmurs in what Alex thinks is supposed to be his version of assurance. 

“I—I’m—” Alex stammers, attempting to tug his hand away from Yassen’s, but the assassin’s grip is infallibly tight.

“No, don’t speak,” Yassen cuts him off. “Listen.”

Alex opens his mouth to argue, but his protests all but die at the assassin’s intense stare, severely calm and closed off except for that strange hint of concern again.

“Do you feel my breathing?” Yassen asks, but before Alex can immediately shake his head no, the assassin gives him a stern look. “Focus, Alex.”

So Alex does, ignoring everything else assaulting his overwhelmed senses and grasping for the sensations under his right hand, the soft fabric of Yassen’s black cashmere sweater, the emanating warmth of another person in such close proximity, a steady thump of a heartbeat, but most of all, he can feel the rhythmic rise and fall of the other man’s chest.

“Very good. Now try to match it—breathe in, slowly, breathe out, exhale, slow, in, out…” Yassen’s voice is low and soothing as he talks Alex into breathing normally again for god knows how long, the only sounds in the room being the assassin’s calming lull and Alex’s ragged breathing and heaving pants as he attempts to get them under control. Gradually, they slow down, mirroring the other man’s stable breathing pattern. Yassen only backs out of Alex’s space and allows for his hand to drop away when his breathing has completely evened out into a consistent cadence.

Alex retracts his hand and grabs a fistful of his blankets, pulling them up to his chest, a comfortable pseudo-barrier and shield between him and the assassin in the way he would hide under his covers when he was much, much younger and unused to Jack as a housekeeper or a friend, when he would try to convince himself in the dark with his eyes clenched that if he couldn’t see any monsters then they wouldn’t be able to see him either, but now his soul is transparent and bared in the worst possible way to the least expected person.

His bedroom is quiet enough to hear a paperclip drop.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Yassen says. 

Alex reaches backwards, grabs one of his pillows, and launches it straight at the assassin. It flies across the room and hits Yassen square in the face before dropping to the ground. A momentary flash of pure bafflement and confusion crosses the assassin's face. Alex would laugh if he weren’t so scared out of his wits, but the slightest hint of bemusement still visible in the other man's expression certainly helps mitigate Alex's fears.

“Alex,” Yassen sighs in what seems to be minor irritation. He looks very unimpressed.

“Sorry,” Alex apologizes. He doesn’t really mean it. “Can I have my pillow back?”

Yassen stares at him.

“Please,” Alex adds, as an afterthought.

Yassen slowly picks up the pillow from the floor of Alex’s bedroom, gives it a couple of pats, and then throws it back to him. Alex catches it in the face with an audible _oof_.

He glares at Yassen, who appears way too amused for his own good. At least the assassin isn’t looking very particularly homicidal right at this moment, which spells good news for Alex.

“Alex.” Yassen shifts further away from the bed, more towards the door, probably to give Alex more space. How strangely thoughtful. “Do you feel better now?”

“Well, as long as you’re not here to kill me,” Alex replies sheepishly, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. A sudden wave of drowsiness crashes into him, accompanied by heavy eyelids that he fails to fight and an involuntary lethargic yawn that overtakes him.

“Go back to sleep.” Yassen pointedly crosses his arms. Or at least that’s what it looks like, in the darkness.

“I wouldn’t have even woken up in the first place if it weren’t for you,” Alex grumbles, lowering himself further into his burrow of warm blankets. His shoulder bumps into the wall behind him as he slides down, protesting his movements with a painful jolt. “Fucking ouch.”

“I’ll buy painkillers for you,” Yassen says, fondly, and Alex has no idea how such a plain statement can sound so affectionate or invoke such a warm feeling from his own chest, so he simply ignores it, blotting it out from his mind.

“Coke, too,” Alex adds. “Not the drugs sort of Coke, though.”

“Coke, too,” Yassen agrees. 

“ _Don’t_ get the off-brand kind,” Alex warns, and he means it.

“Of course,” Yassen says. 

There’s a few moments of silence. Alex doesn’t hear any shuffling or footsteps, so he assumes Yassen is still somewhere in his bedroom. Wait…

“Why are you even in my room in the first place?” Alex wonders out loud, gazing at his stark white ceiling in puzzlement.

“Go to sleep, Alex,” Yassen orders from somewhere in the dark, finality in his tone.

“Goodnight,” Alex says. 

He doesn’t receive a response in return.

***

When Alex wakes up, he goes through the motions of his daily routine without a second thought, brushing his teeth with a non-electric toothbrush and washing his face, languidly dragging himself to the kitchen and cracking the fridge open.

He sleepily blinks at the bright red six-pack of Coke sitting innocently on the uppermost fridge shelf. Alex rubs both his eyes with the heels of his palms until his vision goes spotty with black and white flecks and then takes another look. They’re still there. Maybe Jack bought them as a little pick-me-up for after these past two weeks? 

Alex pulls at the plastic rings with his bare fingers, watching them stretch but not snapping, leaving almost painful red marks on his fingers. He stubbornly tugs at them for a few more seconds, hard, before giving up and fetching a pair of scissors like he should have in the first place.

It only takes two snips for a can to be set free from its plastic prison, but that’s all Alex needs, swiping the cool drink from off the shelf and closing the fridge door with a lazy bump of his hips.

“How many times do I have to tell you that those things are bad for you?” Jack scowls at the can of Coke in Alex’s hand.

“Wait,” Alex says, his eyes comically widening like saucers. “I thought you…” 

_I thought you were the one who bought them_ , he doesn’t say.

“Thought I what?”

“Nevermind,” Alex blurts. “I’m just being silly.” He is, in fact, not being silly. If Jack wasn’t the one that bought them…

Alex feels himself growing bright red in a hot embarrassment as an influx of memories flood into his head like an on switch has just been flicked. Yassen from last night was real. He wasn’t dreaming. He remembers fervently denying Yassen’s existence. He also remembers having a freak out all over the assassin like a hysterical blubbering child.

Someone, please kill him right bloody now.

A sudden thought hits him, a flower of realization blooming amidst his recollections. Alex opens the freezer section of the fridge. Sitting there just as innocuous as the six-pack of Coke is two bags of frozen green peas. He releases the fridge door handle and allows it to swing shut.

He takes a deep, steady breath, placing the can of Coke on the kitchen island before clumsily sprinting back to his bedroom, minding his ankle, all the way past a bewildered Jack who shouts after him in concern, almost tripping over the corner of his bed and colliding with his desk.

There’s a pack of over-the-counter painkillers, like Yassen said he would buy. Next to them, prettily displayed on the surface of the wooden table, the morning sun just barely glinting off its pretty golden red-brown curves and rounded edges is several pieces of Tiger’s Eye professionally strung together into a necklace.

**Author's Note:**

> Spyfest Prompt: Yassen seems scary until you give him a pillow [to the face].
> 
> I know it's quite a bit? I dunno... it's really more of an interlude than anything else but I still liked writing it, especially that bit with the pillow,, I hope you enjoyed!<3
> 
> ,, i also strangely really like how the title sounds?? the way it rolls off the tongue ? hjhfskjd
> 
> ps: i know panic attacks are different for each person,, and i’ve written this one as a minor one and not a full blown really bad one, based on personal experience


End file.
